Successor to the international Jubilee 2000 campaign. 

Genova, 21 July 2001


Statement on G7 final communique

We, members of the JMI steering group, representing 27 Jubilee campaigns over the world, note with disappointment the failure of the richest nations to once again tackle the global debt crisis that is worsening the impoverishment of over 2 billion people in severely indebted countries.

Genova provided a unique opportunity for the G7 after the fiasco of Okinawa. But once again, the G7 has made no attempt to reflect on the now widely discredited HIPC initiative which since it was launched in Cologne has failed to deliver on its promise to provide an "exit from debt problems."

It is true that the number of countries accessing HIPC has increased from 9 to 23 since the Okinawa summit, last year. It is equally true however that most , if not all these countries are now approaching unsustainable levels of debt again. Therefore, it is ingenuous, if not self conceiting for the G7 to be congratulating itself on the so called "important progress that has been achieved in implementing the Initiative."

The G7 claims that HIPC has up to date provided debt relief of over $53 billion out of an initial stock of debt of $74 billion. This contradicts World Bank figures, which as recent as June 2001 put the figure at $34 billion.

In their statement, the G7 seek to encourage countries which have not yet reached decision point to "quickly undertake the necessary economic and social reforms, including the development of a strategy for overall poverty reduction in coperation with the World Bank and the IMF".

In our view, it is precisely these reforms, driven by doctrinaire conditionalities, which are reproducing the relations of inequality and dependency and deepening the debt crisis.

Similarly, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) have effectively become adjunts to the neo - liberal macro economic policy instruments that determine the Structural Adjustment Programmes. The experience of the last two decades show that these policies have failed to deliver poor countries out of chronic poverty or the debt crisis.

We call on the G7 to stop flogging the HIPC dead horse and face up to the challenges of total debt cancellation for poor countries and the conditions that will ensure a lasting exit out of the debt crisis.

End.